New Release Round-up,
New Release Round-Up - 12th June 2020
Today’s new releases include Beethoven's Fifth Symphony from Teodor Currentzis and MusicAeterna, Verdi's Otello (starring Jonas Kaufmann, Carlos Álvarez and Federica Lombardi) from Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra dell'Academia Nationale di Santa Cecilia, Massenet's first full-length opera Don César de Bazan, and an album of musical cityscapes from Lisa Batiashvili, ranging from Charlie Chaplin to Giya Kancheli.
This is the first Beethoven recording from the incendiary Greek maestro and his Perm-based orchestra, who are currently touring widely with their cycle of Beethoven symphonies; BachTrack described their performance of the Fifth at last year’s BBC Proms as ‘noisily sublime…truly electrifying’, whilst The Times observed that ‘[Currentzis's] audacity and his musicians’ virtuosity was exhilarating’.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Verdi: Otello
Jonas Kaufmann (Otello), Federica Lombardi (Desdemona), Carlos Álvarez (Iago), Orchestra e Coro dell'Academia Nationale di Santa Cecilia, Antonio Pappano
Since his debut as the ‘Lion of Venice’ at Covent Garden in 2017, Kaufmann has returned to the role several times in Germany, and joined forces with Pappano (who conducted those first London performances) and his Roman orchestra last year for his first studio recording of the opera; the cast includes the young Italian soprano Federica Lombardi singing her first Desdemona and veteran Iago Carlos Àlvarez, who has previously recorded the role for Christian Thielemann and Riccardo Muti.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
City Lights
Lisa Batiashvili (violin), Georgia Philharmonic, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Nikoloz Rachveli
The cities referenced on the Georgian violinist’s sixth solo album for Deutsche Grammophon include Paris, Berlin, Buenos Aires and Hollywood, taking in music by Charlie Chaplin, Astor Piazzólla, Michel Legrand, Johann Strauss I, JS Bach, Dvořák and Ennio Morricone, and a fantasy on themes by the late Giya Kancheli. Guest artists include Till Bronner, Miloš Karadaglić and Katie Melua, whose No Better Magic receives its world premiere recording here.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Massenet: Don César de Bazan
Laurent Naouri, Elsa Dreisig, Marion Lebègue; Ensemble Aedes, Orchestre des Frivolités Parisiennes, Mathieu Romano
Premiered in Paris in 1872, Massenet’s first full-length opera shares elements of its plot with Offenbach’s La Périchole and Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard; the original source was Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas, though Massenet and his librettist subverted the tragic dénouement into something more appropriate for the Opéra Comique. This recording was made live last year at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, and uses the 1888 version which Massenet prepared following the destruction of the original orchestral parts in a fire the previous year.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Beethoven: Piano Concertos Nos. 3 & 4
Elizabeth Sombart (piano), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Pierre Vallet
This is the second volume of the French pianist’s Beethoven cycle with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded last year around concerts at Cadogan Hall; reviewing the same artists’ accounts of Chopin’s Piano Concertos on Orchid in 2016, The Guardian described Sombart’s playing as ‘superb: technically precise but possessing a flexibility and freedom that lets the music breathe’.
Available Format: CD
The Secret Fauré 3: Sacred Vocal Works
Katja Stuber (soprano), Benjamin Appl (baritone), Sinfonieorchester Basel, Balthasar-Neumann-Chor, Ivor Bolton
As well as the Requiem, the third volume of Sony’s lovely Secret Fauré series also includes the Cantique de Jean Racine, Super flumina Babylonis, the prelude to La Passion and the Messe des pêcheurs de Villerville, which Fauré composed in collaboration with his former pupil André Messager in aid of a fishermen’s charity in 1881.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The mainstay of this fifth instalment of Štilec’s survey of the music of his compatriot (1850-1900) is the Third Symphony, written two years before his death; the series has been praised for championing Fibich as ‘one of the great innovators of Czech Romanticism’ (BBC Music Magazine). Also includes the overtures to The Tempest (1894) and Šárka (1897), and the funeral march from the The Bride of Messina (1884).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Philip Sawyers: Symphony No. 4 & Hommage to Kandinsky
BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Kenneth Woods
Woods conducts world premiere recordings of two major works by the British composer, with whom he worked closely during his tenure as the English Symphony Orchestra's John McCabe Composer-in-Association: the Fourth Symphony (completed in 2018) and the symphonic poem Hommage to Kandinsky, commissioned and premiered by the Grand Rapids Symphony in 2014 and inspired by Tate Modern’s Kandinsky: The Road to Abstraction exhibition almost a decade earlier.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Released following the hundredth anniversary of the orchestra’s foundation by pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes in 1918, this set includes a 150-page booklet exploring its history and features Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15 (performed by string orchestra), Strauss’s Aus Italien, Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 3, Varèse’s Amériques, Bernd Richard Deutsch’s organ concerto Okeanos, and Johannes Maria Staud’s Stromab; the orchestra premiered the latter two works as part of their centenary celebrations.
Available Formats: 3 SACDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
